Fundamental chaos: it is a note I find and re-find written to myself in an effort to encourage recall for an intended poem. I get notions for verse, and other written bits, and I jot them down in an effort to keep them closer to consciousness than memory allows. It is, oft times, years between conception and fruition. The phrase noted above is the flip side of a reminder on which I wrote "elemental chaos". Which came first? Original trajectory often gets waylaid but detours work just fine in my approach to writing and living.

I lead a life that suits me. I do work that enriches me.  I am privileged to consort with talented and energetic people who inspire and transform me. I am, in the present time, more happy than not. The elements that collide to form my days are more kismet than construct and there is a continuing and lovely sense of opportunity.

The answer to the question, "what do you do?" (in the sense of what occupation or work occupies or identifies me) has, for most of my life, eluded me. Would that it were one thing or another but it is one thing and another. There is a hierarchy: writing, visual arts, business (my own- whatever that might be at a moment), film, etc. At sixteen years old I started a house cleaning business. I liked setting my own hours, working with those I wished to work with, creating time for creating. In those days there was a life of hitchhiking, adventure seeking, exploration and a conducting of living experiments (I'm not talking burning of ants here but of setting my notions of "living" on fire).

John Daniel Walters and I started a business together that we call METAL. It is an alchemy of intentions: hub of exchange, fabrication shop, gallery of repurposed, salvaged, and artful items; performance venue, an arena for problem solving and expression- it becomes what we who enter into it are. It suits us, John and me, and we suit it. Because of the malleability of matter it evolves as we do. It advances as our experience does.

In Greek mythology c/Chaos was said to be the foundation of reality and the first deity and god of air. We know chaos in other aspects and each of them are relative to my notes and to the formless state of an idea preceding its commencement.

Perhaps, more void than form, this chronicle is a testament to things that are mysterious and things that now form an answer: I am an owner of METAL, with John Daniel Walters , and this month we celebrate the start of our second year of transacting and producing as METAL. It's a fundamental gratitude that I share here. Happy anniversary, John, patrons, associates and Rosie.